musings about life from the other side of the hill

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21-day fitness challenge

My chiropractor, Eric, sent me a link to this video. I’m embedding it here so I can watch it whenever I need some motivation. Hope you find it helpful too. Watch it all the way through, even if you feel pretty sure what it’s going to tell you.

Description from YouTube: “A Doctor-Professor answers the old question “What is the single best thing we can do for our health” in a completely new way. Dr. Mike Evans is founder of the Health Design Lab at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, an Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of Toronto, and a staff physician at St. Michael’s Hospital.”

By the end of Day 2, I noticed that my whole outlook each day is so much improved, lighter, happier, more energetic. I want to eat better, do more. I feel more creative, inspired, planning new art-craft projects, etc. I am absolutely in a better mood all the time.

I’m more open to making other plans, other commitments, even when they’re nothing to do with fitness. (But I guess they are, really — they’re all about fitness-of-Kate’s-inner-self.) Yesterday, I found myself making no less than 3 suggestions to my partner about active things I want to do with him—including 2 fly-fishing classes.

I had an insight yesterday. Many years ago I officially gave up procrastinating, very successfully. Doing so changed my life. Only after giving it up did I realize that procrastination had been taking up an enormous amount of my energy, emotion, resistance, avoidance, you name it. I always had kind of a low-level tension, that something’s-not-done feeling. OK, back to the present…. I absolutely know, intellectually at least, that keeping fit helps one’s mood and spirit. And I’ve felt it, of course, whenever I’ve done something active. But I forget to remember that feeling from one time to the next. I forget that I have that easy route to a lifted mood and brighter energy.

So yesterday, my insight was comparing procrastination to my laziness about fitness. Procrastination was nothing more than avoiding doing stuff I knew had to be done, even stuff I *wanted* to do. My laziness about keeping fit has been very much like procrastination in its effects on me. (Duh—why didn’t I see this before?!)

Making this 21-day commitment has changed the landscape of how I approach all activity, everything I do and think and how I feel during the rest of the day. I guess my mind, emotions, and body all know that it’s inevitable—that I WILL be keeping active, no question, so what’s the point of resisting. As they say, “Resistance is futile.”

AND I also realized that I will be remaining on this endorphin high for the rest of the challenge. (Yay!)

It’s a done deal, and everything in me has already made the adjustment. Not just my body, but also my mind, mood, emotions, etc. have already switched over to acceptance rather than resistance. So voila! I’ve let go of the bad energy that comes with resistance.